Chapter 11

“I’ll take it.”

Salima was going to blow her shit. I really had no intention of getting her car fixed. I mean I did have my boy check it out so I could give her an accurate assessment. The shit wasn’t worth the money she was going to continue to put into it. I told him to make it run, but I already had plans to get her into a new whip.

When I left his shop this morning, I came straight to the dealership to buy her a car like I said I would. She was about to be the proud owner of a 2022 Infiniti Q50. It was fully loaded, black on black interior and exterior and black rims. It was sexy and was a perfect fit for her.

“Cash, card, or check?” Lou asked.

I picked up my backpack and set it on the table. “Cash. There’s a little something extra in there for you.”

“I appreciate you, man.”

I stood and shook his hand. “You always get me right, Lou. Make sure they fully detail that bitch. I wanna be able to see my reflection in this paint job.”

“I got you.”

“I’ll be back to pick it up tomorrow. I have some business to take care of today.”

“No problem. I’ll make sure it’s pulled from the showroom.”

“Thank you. Be easy, Lou.”

I stepped out of his office and headed out to my car where Maceo was waiting. He shook his head as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Trick ass nigga,” he mumbled.

I laughed. “I’d say I’m doing a good deed.”

“And just how are you gonna get her to accept a brand-new car?”

I grinned as I pulled out of the parking lot. “You underestimate me. She’ll take it. She’ll have no choice.”

“What is it about this girl, Deuce?”

“Shit if I know, man. She’s fine as hell and I like her smart-ass mouth. She’s a lil’ dramatic, but she’s funny without even trying.”

“Let me find out you trying to make her your woman. You done with your ho phase?”

“I ain’t ever been no ho. I don’t stick my dick in everything. Although I do wanna stick it in her. I just know that pussy is top tier.”

“Well, you need to make haste. I’m trying to see what up with her friend.”

“Look at you. I’m not your wing man.”

“I don’t need you to wing shit. I’m just willing to bet they are a packaged deal. You see one, you see the other.”

I shook my head. As I settled into our drive, I thought to myself. Would it be so bad to have a steady girlfriend? I mean, a nigga wasn’t getting any younger. I was thirty years old. My mama was on my ass about getting out of this life and giving her some grandchildren. She could have one, but it would never be both. I was born and bred for this shit. I got immense gratification from laying down a muthafucka that deserved that shit.

There were too many fucked up people walking around like they couldn’t be touched. Did I think I was playing God? Nah. Was I ridding the world of scum? Was I protecting my people? Absolutely yes. Maybe it was unconventional… unconstitutional even. But somebody had to do it. Why not me?

My family’s legacy dated back generations. My great-great-grandfather was a kingpin. Fuck the city, he had the whole state on lock. He came into the game a corner boy. His family was poor. They barely had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. At ten years old, he linked up with a local dealer named Jake, trying to make money to feed him and his siblings.

He was a natural in the art of finesse, and he was good with numbers. Jake took a liking to him and paid him to do odd jobs or run errands. Being around Jake meant witnessing shit no ten-year-old should. Gramps was like a sponge; he absorbed everything he saw.

At twelve, he asked Jake to teach him the game. Now Jake was hesitant. He was sure gramps was in over his head, but he wanted to see what he would do. He gave him a small amount of product, dropped him in the hood, and told him to sell it. He sat watching every transaction. The product was gone within two hours. From that day, it was up. Gramps quickly moved up the ranks and by eighteen, he was running the city as Jake’s protege.

When Jake was gunned down, my grandfather took over and leveled up. He used his newfound connections to expand business to the gun trade, diamond mining, fight clubs, and gambling rings. That’s where the real money came in. For years my family dominated several angles of the underground world. It wasn’t until my father took over did he want to clean up our image. He said he was tired of pumping poison into our community. Imagine that… criminal with a conscious and morals.

He handed the reigns to the underground shit over to his brother and brought the family into a new era.

Most of us were trained in weapons and hand to hand combat. Our sole purpose was to protect our own. Now, if people wanted to utilize our services, it came with a hefty price tag. The thing about a corrupt muthafucka is they didn’t mind paying you to make a problem go away. Each of my siblings had a special set of skills that were vital to the operation of the family business.

As the oldest, I was the lead henchman, and Maceo was my second in command. Kerrion was certified and trained in hand-to-hand combat and made sure everyone was up on their skills. Devin was the weapons specialist. The nigga could get his hands on any type of weapon you could imagine, but his specialty was guns. If people thought I was trigger happy, they hadn’t met him.

Jaeda was our tech wiz. She could hack anything and could get any information we needed on anything or anybody, no matter how deep it was hidden. She made sure our asses were covered on all fronts when it came to security and surveillance. Then there was my baby sis Mia. She was young but baby girl was a sharpshooter, just like her mama. Maddie was a bad muthafucka, and she taught her well.

I wondered if Salima knew how to shoot. If she didn’t, she was gonna have to learn. I was a feared man, but I also had a lot of enemies. A muthafucka would be stupid to go after her to get at me. It wasn’t wise, but it wasn’t impossible. Lil baby had a smart ass mouth. In any case, I needed her to be able to protect herself.

“ C ut the power,” I instructed Jaeda through my headset. “The alarms and cameras too.”

I could hear her clicking away on her computer. The lounge would be opening in a few hours, but I had a few things to take care of before I headed there for the night. At the top of my list was Jasper Stark.

He was one of the many people whose name Jaeda pulled from the pedophile ring data. Good ol’ Jasper was one of their highest paying customers. When shit went down, he conveniently decided to take his family out of town on vacation. It took Jaeda no time to locate him.

I decided to let him sweat for a little. I wanted him to think he was safe before I got ahold of him. I’d been tailing him all day. From breakfast with the family at their beachfront property to the shopping trip he took them on and back to the well-lit property with damn near every light on.

The property was secluded by a bunch of trees and sat at the end of a long road. The nearest neighbor was about a mile away. It didn’t surprise me that he was hidden away for privacy. Jaeda was able to pull his security information and camera footage dating back months ago. He’d been using this place as a personal playground. Every time good ol’ wifey thought he was out of town in business, he was here with a different young girl.

Jaeda had successfully tapped the camera on his phone so she could hear everything. According to her, the wife and kids had taken a drive to her parents’ house which was about an hour away. Jasper claimed he wasn’t feeling well and stayed behind. That muthafucka wasn’t sick at all.

Right now, he was sitting in his living room drinking his beer, thinking he was safe. He just didn’t know he was about to pay the ultimate price for his crimes.

The lights went out approximately a minute later. Through my night vision goggles, I could see him feeling around for.

“Alright,” Jaeda said. “Y’all are good to go.”

“Appreciate you, sis.”

“Mmm hmm. Y’all niggas be careful. I love y’all.”

“We love you too.”

I heard the call drop and turned to my brother.

“You ready?” I asked Maceo.

“Been ready, nigga.”

We came out of the woods and made our way up the front steps. We had no plans of trying to break in. We would walk straight through the front door. When she cut the security, Jaeda also disabled the smart locks. That’s the thing with technology. The safer a muthafucka thought they were the more exposed they make themselves.

I trusted the knob and pushed the door open.

“Who’s there!” Jasper yelled.

Mace and I quietly made our way through the entryway.

“I’ve got a gun!” Jasper yelled.

I laughed as I rounded the corner. “The fuck you think you gon’ do with it?”

His eyes widened as Mace and I made our presence know.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Maceo raised his gun. “You, muthafucka.”

He tried to run, but Mace shot him in the kneecap. He dropped to the floor, howling in pain. We walked over to him and snatched him up from the floor.

“Please… please, I have money. I can get you anything you want. Just?—”

I brought the butt of my gun down across his face.

“Nigga, shut the fuck up. I don’t give a damn about your money. I’m not the muthafuckas you pay for your little fetish.”

“Wh-what are you t-talking about?”

Mace and I ignored his question. We led him to the kitchen and tossed him onto the table. While my brother held him down, I restrained his arms and legs with rope.

“Why are you doing this!” Jasper yelled.

Maceo punched him in the face. “Shut the fuck up.”

I pulled out the file I had on him.

“Jasper Stark. Businessman by day, lover of little girls by night. You are one sick muthafucka, you know that.” I held the paper with a list of his transactions to his face. “In the last five years, you’ve spent close to a million dollars trafficking underaged girls.”

He began to stutter. “I… I?—”

“You what? You can explain? Explain to me how you get off of fucking little girls against their will. Does your wife know what kind of man you are, Jasper? Do your children know Daddy has a fetish for little girls? You thought you were safe after your pedophile ass friends were murdered at Aura, didn’t you? That’s the thing about secrets, Jasper. What’s done in the dark, will come to the light.”

I placed the paper on his chest and went back over to my bag. Carefully, I removed the viles containing the deadly cocktail.

“You ever seen someone die by lethal injection, Jasper?” I asked. “I think it’s a waste. I mean, why would you want to punish someone by killing them quick? Bastards like you deserve a slowly, painful death.”

I filled the needle with the lethal concoction and shot it into his arm.

“Now it’ll take a minute for it to kick in, but you’ll know when it does.”

Maceo covered his mouth with duct tape as I took a seat in front of him and lit a blunt. His breathing was rapid, and he struggled about on the table. Behind the tape, his muffled pleas went unheard. I picked up my file and plucked a stack of pictures from it.

“You know you fucked up, right?” I asked. “I want you to look at these pictures. These are your victims. Look at their faces and know that this is for them. You and muthafuckas like you should be wiped from the face of the earth. You paid for these girls. You stripped them of their innocence and dignity when you stuck your dirty ass dick in them.”

Maceo raised his gun and shot him in the crotch. Jasper cried and writhed in pain as blood seeped through his pants and onto the table.

Mace chuckled. “I’m sorry, did that hurt?”

I laughed out loud. “Excuse my brother, he’s a little trigger-happy.”

I took a long pull from my blunt before blowing the smoke in Jasper’s face.

“Right about now, you should be feeling the effects on the drugs I injected you with. Your insides are gonna feel like they’re burning. As you lay here thinking about your transgressions, you’re gonna feel immense pain. You see, I injected you with the venom of a taipan, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Without treatment, you will bleed, you will be paralyzed, you will hemorage, and you will die. The sad part is you will be here all alone. Your poor family will find you and when they do, they will know exactly what you have been up to, Mr. Stark. I doubt there will be much sympathy once they read this file on you.”

I stood from the chair and outed my blunt on his forehead. At this point, he was moaning and groaning in pain. I grabbed the paper from his chest and placed it back into the folder before dropping it into the chair.

We gathered our things and headed for the door. being us, Mr. Stark’s violent shaking body began to slowly subside. The paralysis was kicking in. Still, his pain was audible. We left the house and started our trail back through the woods to where our four wheelers were parked.

“That wasn’t as much fun as I was hoping for,” Maceo complained.

I chuckled. “Nigga, what did you wanna do?”

“Torture that bitch made ass nigga. Make him target practice. Ain’t no fun in letting the toxins do all the work.”

“As long as the job is done, that’s all that matters. Let’s get the fuck outta here. I gotta pick Salima up for work, so we need to hop on the jet ASAP.”

He smirked. “You would wanna get back to her. You did all that in the lounge as she still ain’t give you no pussy.”

“That pussy is gonna be mine. Just you wait and see.”